They are many different opinions on how your zettelkasten ID could be structured. I think the one idea that everyone agrees on is that every zettelkasten ID should be unique. I use zettelkasten IDs for two things my actual zettelkasten notes and my blog posts. The ID structure for both is the same. I am able to differentiate between the two by file extensions.

Here is an example ID zettelkastenid-2020-05-12-2221 The first part of the ID is a simple word or combination of words to help me find that ID on the same day I create it for editing purposes. When I create a note I may want to go back in a hour or so and change it slightly. Using Vim's auto completion it is much easier to find the note that I worked on previously in the day with the alpha part of the ID. If I am searching for notes on a particular subject I will use FZF and Silver Search to search for tags or particular words or phrases. The second part of the ID is simply a time stamp of when the file was created. The format is year-month-date-time. I believe going down to the second will provide a unique enough number for a primary key. I inserted the hyphens to make the ID more readable. You certainly don't need the hyphens but it helps me see quickly when the note was originally created.

The zettelkasten ID is the same as the actual file name except for the file name includes an extension. For blog posts I use .md and for notes I use .markdown. This helps me to quickly differentiate between the two on the command line.

Again there are many ways to create a unique ID and I believe there are many right ways to do it. This is just the method that works for me.

Zettelkasten ID zettelkastenid-2020-05-12-2221